Tagged With "Eurozone"

A German town on the Dutch border hopes to convince merchants, customers, and eventually all of Germany to stop using 1- and 2-cent coins.

Sounds good - but on smaller items the price always gets rounded up. When the UK went to a decimal system nothing went down to the nearest amount.

Canada got rid of the penny over 3 years ago. As Garry says, usually things are priced so that prices get rounded up to the nearest nickel, although they theoretically can also get rounded down. The reason was basic economics -- it cost about 1.5 cents to make the 1 cent coin. And a penny buys nothing any more. I'm glad to be rid of them.

The proposal to get rid of the penny keeps coming up here, too…and every time it does, it gets shot down by people who feel as if the ground will fall out from under the economy if there are no pennies. I wish we could follow Canada on that one (among other good ideas they’ve had). I’ve got a tray at my desk with leftover coins from here and there, and I’m always amazed by some of the little ones: Italian centimo coins from when they were 1/100 of 1/616 of a dollar. As nearly as I can tell,...